19 Discontinued Pepperidge Farm Snacks We Miss The Most

Margaret Rudkin knew nothing of baking bread, but tried and tried her hand at making dough, both literally and figuratively, and eventually found a recipe of success, and began offering her quality fare under the name of her and her family's Fairfield, Connecticut home — Pepperidge Farm. Mrs. Rudkin was both a pioneer baker and businesswoman, with an eye for importing great products and ideas abroad, and saw a rise in sales thanks to her offerings in the 1950s and '60s, as she introduced hit cookies like Bordeaux, Brussels, and Milano, fresh frozen pastries and desserts, and scrumptious Swiss crackers with the now ubiquitous name of Goldfish.

Rudkin would sell Pepperidge Farm to Campbell Soup in 1961, staying on the board for a few more years, as the new owners became stewards to a classic American brand, and have honored her legacy ever since. However, for as many hits as Pepperidge Farm has produced, there have been misfires, or perhaps some of their products were either way ahead of their time, or just not beloved enough to hang on at supermarket aisles.

Let's make like bespectacled and boating hat wearing Pepperidge Farm pitchman Titus Moody (Parker Fennelly followed by Charles C. Welch) and remember some of those great bygone products of yesteryear, and of recent years, and pay tribute to 19 discontinued Pepperidge Farm snacks we miss the most. It's okay to hold out faint hope that they may one day return, right? Three words: goldfish sandwich bread!

With the success of their American Collection Cookies line, featuring names like Sausalito and Nantucket in the titles of their popular baked goods, Pepperidge Farms hoped to have repeated success with their frozen desserts. Dubbed American Collection Desserts, and debuting in 1987, they offered a whopping 11 single serve frozen delights that proudly dotted the United States map. The sea to shining sea options were: Amherst Apple Crumb Coffee Cake, Bennington Apple Berry Pie, Berkshire Apple Crisp, Boston Cream Pie, Charleston Peach Melba Shortcake, Malibu Hot Fudge Peanut Butter Brownie, Manhattan Strawberry Cheesecake, Mississippi Mud Pie, Monterey Hot Fudge Chocolate Chunk Brownie, Newport Hot Fudge Brownie, and San Francisco Chocolate Mousse.

Despite being an Edison Best New Product Award winner, the line was gone after four years. That wasn't nearly enough time to visit all those tasty municipalities, and to heed the sage wisdom of the Pepperidge Farm guy, when he said in the TV ad to "forget everything your mother taught you about sharing," about these single-serve wonders (via YouTube).

Pepperidge Farm has been adding flavored swirls to bread as far back as 1983, when they gave cinnamon a whirl as a new product. Four decades on, they've conjured up fun and delicious "swirls and swirls of yummy morning magic" with Swirl Breads flavored in Brown Sugar Cinnamon, Raisin Cinnamon (both in white and whole wheat options), French Toast, and seasonal sensations like Strawberry and Pumpkin Spice.

Blueberry broke out as a beautiful option back in 2013, and despite finding welcome homes after traveling from Pepperidge Farm's oven to customer's toasters, and then salivating mouths, the company stayed true to its package labeling, offering it up as a limited edition item. It hung around for years, but the company confirmed via Twitter in 2022 that Blueberry Swirl Bread was indeed discontinued, further breaking blueberry lovers hearts, following the demise of their Blueberry Turnovers. Customers have had no choice since but to find their own blueberry swirl bread thrills, on some other hill.

For a company well known for its baked goods, it's rather odd that they currently have no crumbly coffee cakes. Pepperidge Farms has a long history with coffee cakes, dating back to at least 1957 with a basic one, and adding flavors like pecan and cinnamon raisin in the following decade.

The heyday of Pepperidge Farm coffee cakes came about in 1975, when fresh choices included apple streusel (loaded with apples, pecans and cinnamon), blueberry crunch, butter pecan (made with grade AA butter and brown sugar), cinnamon almond, and raspberry. Pepperidge Farm coffee cakes disappeared from shelves in the 1980s, but the memories live on, even on bookshelves, as it was used as an example in a marketing textbook, and even name dropped in Judith Krantz's 1982 novel, "Mistral's Daughter." Krantz wrote about it as a hopeful breakfast option, "a Pepperidge Farm coffee cake, ready to heat, the kind with the lovely, sticky white icing and raisins."

Joseph Bucci secured the first patent for frozen pizzas in 1950, and the mass production and consumption of them took off in the 1970s, thanks to pizzerias turned name brands like Totino's and Tombstone in grocery stores. Skimpy toppings and light cheese created both a government and public backlash, which brought about a rise in higher quality and tastier frozen pizza options in the 1980s.

With Stouffer's French Bread Pizza leading the way, other companies, like Pepperidge Farm, wanted a piece of the ... pie. In 1985 they tested a revolutionary union — the Croissant Pastry Pizza — in Texas before a nationwide roll-out. It came in five iterations, including hamburger, instantly won the hearts of Akron Beacon Journal taste testers, and was named to Lempert Report's list of 10 best products in 1986. It was gone by 1989, which was the opposite of what the Pepperidge Farm guy said in its TV ad — "it's totally awesome" (via YouTube).

Noticing a trend, and a need for more individualized frozen food options at the dawn of the 1980s, Pepperidge Farm introduced a line of Deli's, which had their pitchman reminiscing about taking his old sweetheart (who he didn't end up marrying) to a "big city deli" (via YouTube). Pepperidge Farm's manager of public relations, Scott Ronbach, told The San Bernardino County Sun, "This is our first entry into the rapidly growing frozen food, main dish entree market." 

Six varieties of Deli's were available to "heat and eat," with The Berkshire Eagle food critics all in on the turkey, ham, and cheese one, and a San Bernardino County Sun taste tester admitted that they, "wouldn't feel guilty going to dinner and leaving something like that for the kids. It reminds me of an Egg McMuffin without the egg." The other five bite size savories were chicken salad, Reuben in rye pastry, scrambled eggs with Canadian bacon and cheese, sliced beef with brown sauce, and western style omelet.

Not to be confused with Hostess' long lost Choco Bliss, Pepperidge Farm had their own after-dinner indulgence called Dessert Bliss. It was introduced in 2002, alongside such brethren as Giant Goldfish sandwich crackers, microwaveable pot pies, and Texas Toast garlic bread.

In name alone, Dessert Bliss dreams up the kind of eating put on display in their TV ads — where one doesn't even want to leave the cozy confines of the couch, and eat them all day. The bite-size treats were advertised as "unlike anything else in the cookie aisle," and came in three different fillings — Chocolate Almond, Cookies and Creme, and Pralines and Creme. Of the latter, Mr. Tidbit of the Star Tribune, who likened them to little tart pans, praised how the Pralines "stay remarkably crunchy." Perhaps these cookies would have hung around longer had they hired Hall & Oates to rework one of their hit songs for an ad. Just think how catchy (and delicious) "your Dessert Bliss is on my list" would have sounded.

In 1957, Pepperidge Farms unveiled, for the first time, entries in the realm of frozen foods. At the Food Editors' Conference that year, they introduced a bevy of flaky apple treats, including Viennese apfelstrudel, apple rolls, deep dish apple pie, and apple dumplings. The San Francisco Examiner noted "From unpretentious looking pieces of frozen dough they rise in the oven, light and golden, ready to serve."

They were soon in stores, and by 1963, peach joined apple as a delicious dumpling option. Four came in a package, and two prep styles were suggested on the back — Continental Style with powdered sugar or whipped cream, or American Style with ice cream or hard sauce. They were so good that one eater thought for a decade that her farm-dwelling grandmother was making them from scratch, only to one day find the Pepperidge Farm box in the trash (via The Courier-Journal). If it's good enough for grandma, it's good enough for the rest of us.

In the pantheon of genius ideas to encourage children to eat sandwiches, bread in the shape of enlarged Goldfish crackers has got to be one of the best of all time. The sea-fare-ing product launched in 2011, with "a familiar smile ... now in the bread aisle," in white or whole wheat, and perfect for kids — crust-free (via The News Journal). A year later, to celebrate Pepperidge Farm's 75th anniversary, brown sugar and cinnamon were two new choices for creative snacking that would surely have made the Earl of Sandwich blush.

Bob Batz Jr. of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette perfectly summarized the novel bread saying it "adds new meaning to 'fish sandwich.'" And it wasn't just for kids, as kids at heart were joining in on the fun, making grilled cheeses, melts, or just sharing photos of the bread as is, to raise a smile. It's long overdue for the smiles to return, as taiyaki just doesn't cut it.

The 1980s saw the rise of premium frozen pizzas, and in the same aisle, as the Knight-Ridder headline ran, ice cream was entering its own "arena of snob appeal." Häagen-Dazs was the leader in that category. Pepperidge Farm joined the fray in 1985, with the Maine creamery Deering creating their actual ice cream. Deering, according to "The Great American Ice Cream Book" author Paul Dickson, is the best he's ever tasted.

Terry Rawson, who was Pepperidge Farm's general manager of the product, told the Courier-Post, "People are after new taste sensations," and yet the "sensations" they offered were pretty classic flavors, nine in all, with five being chocolate-based, and the others being butter pecan, French vanilla, brownie nut cookies, and peanut butter swirl. While the ice creams never made it past the boundaries of the New England test market, in today's new era of ice cream with snob appeal, classic flavors under a name like Pepperidge Farm sound like a most welcome throwback.

Products with exclamation points in their names always stand out on a shelf, and for Pepperidge Farm, their Jingos! crackers were a part of the company's plan of "moving forward with gusto" in the second decade of the 21st century, as noted by Denise Morrison, president and chief executive officer of Campbell Soup (via Food Business News). Jingos! were available in three "amped up flavors" — Lime & Sweet Chili, Parmesan Garlic, and Fiesta Cheddar. Pennsylvania-based WNEP held a taste test where the Lime & Sweet Chili kind won the crown, and had one tester thinking of summer pairings, saying it "would be great with a margarita."

The crackers also marked a new path for Pepperidge Farm and the use of social media. They signed up brand ambassadors that were as excited as the actors in the TV ad (via iSpot.tv), decked out in Jingos! T-shirts, and with oodles and oodles of Jingos! boxes on hand to spread the word of the new product's "bold flavors" and "snappy crunch." Sadly, their hard work to #MakeItJingos was all in vain!

Little is known about Pepperidge Farm's line of hors d'oeuvres, other than they sprouted up around 1970, and included such frozen to warm appetizers as cocktail franks in blankets, quiches Lorraine, and sweet and sour meatballs. The one hors d'oeuvres in the line-up that holds the most intrigue is the Langostino-Scallop Rissoles. Google that phrase in quotes and not a single result is returned.

All that is left to summarize its existence are occasional eBay auctions of flattened, empty boxes picturing the mysterious crusty bite-sized item, with the description on the back indicating that this combination of scallops and langostino was rolled in a layer of pastry, and had been enriched with sherry wine flavor. There's also a cartoon image of a totally happening cocktail party, which one wishes they could use a time machine to transport them back to, just for a taste.

Pepperidge Farm had collaborated with McCormick spice company for a Goldfish x Frank's RedHot mash-up in 2021, which became one of the most buzzed about crackers that summer, and would go even bolder for their next act. Taking a cue from their customers who were already making their fusions at home, in 2022, Goldfish got lathered up in Old Bay seasoning.

Old Bay is no stranger to seasoning other things besides Maryland blue crabs, as they've been sprinkled on potato chips, popcorn, beer, and even vodka. But the holy, yet limited edition union with Goldfish proved to be a real winner, notching a billion media impressions within two days of life, and selling out after only nine hours of existence. If any one item on this entire list screams of being worthy of permanent status on the Pepperidge Farm roster, it would most definitely be Old Bay Seasoned Goldfish.

Cakes have long been a part of the Pepperidge Farm family, but today, all that remains is a line of layer cakes. For a short period of time, from 1963 until a few years later, the world was blessed with their frozen Parfait Cakes that Margaret Rudkin dubbed, "new and unusual, with a unique flavor all their own."

Mrs. Rudkin further explained her choice of the "Parfait" product name to the Meriden Journal, as having a double meaning, with the literal one being "perfect," which to her seemed "to describe exactly the convenience of the cakes." There were five Parfait layered cake options that fed a party of six to eight people — Chocolate, Chocolate Fudge, Devil's Food, Pineapple, and Strawberry — and each were topped with "delicate 'kisses'" (via The Leader-Post). Who today wouldn't want to give these cakes a big fat wet kiss of their own?

Goldfish Sandwich Bread was an ingenious option for the kiddos, and the adult equivalent was their line of Party Breads, which were essentially tiny slices of bread, perfect for any group-snacking occasion. Possibly in existence by the early 1950s, they were in wider popular consumption by the mid-1960s.

In 1966, Nancy Norton of The Boston Globe championed the offerings of Pumpernickel Slices, Rye Slices, and Cheese Bread as "bite-size tidbits [that] will enhance guests at a poetry reading or break ice at the most sophisticated cocktail party." A year later, The News' Recipe Box column praised even their pleasing aesthetic look as "so attractive when carefully arranged on a handsome wooden tray." They were also promoted for use by Enid Borden in her cookbook, "Made With Love: The Meals On Wheels Family Cookbook."

Sadly, the Party has come to an end for these tiny Pepperidge Farm breads. Those who loved using them to construct their "hanky pankies" are now looking for a hankie to wipe up their tears (via WCPO).

Variety is the spice of life, and the varieties of vittles found within snack mixes are what make life even more wonderful than it already is. Everyone and their mother thankfully makes a snack mix, from Chex to Cheez-It, Reese's and even Parmcrisps. One time members on that list, and oddly absent from it today, are the fine folks of Pepperidge Farm. And why wouldn't they offer a snack mix, with their ace in the whole bag being Goldfish crackers?

There have been several snack mixes under the Pepperidge Farm umbrella — Lightly Smoked, Spicy, Super Cheddar, Goldfish Party Mix, and Nutty Deluxe, to name a handful, and they all need to be reinstated immediately. As the Pepperidge Farm guy explained about the Classic one (which also had a cameo on "Seinfeld" per Product Placement Blog), "with so many tantalizing tastes, it's seven different kinds of delicious," and who can argue with such simple logic as that? (via YouTube)

Not to be confused with their stellar Snack Mixes, although they would be a great addition to them, Pepperidge Farm's Snack Sticks were a crunchy snack attack all their own that eaters put up very little defense against. Launched in 1978 (via The York Dispatch) with three options — Wheat, Sesame, and Pumpernickel — they were sold on the dream of "a crisp pretzel, a tasty cracker, and a crunchy bread stick ... all in one!" 

In the next century, the Sticks fell under their Baked Naturals line, alongside Wheat Crisps and Pretzel Thins, with two options to crunch on — Toasted Sesame with a hint of garlic, and Artisan Cheese, made up of Asiago blue, sharp cheddar and Romano cheeses. One fan took to Twitter to elevate the latter as "sophisticated Cheez-its," and The Supermarket Sampler's (via Daily Press) Carolyn Wyman praising Pepperidge Farm's triumph "in elevating the humble bread stick from an Italian restaurant stomach-filler into something to look forward to."

Hiding in the shadows of cookies, crackers, breads, and pastries, Pepperidge Farm once had a line of canned soups that were even fancier than the ones their parent company Campbell's were offering. Around the time of their introduction in 1965, The Daily Times extolled their virtues, from their labeling to the contents, saying "these have body, have been seasoned knowingly, and actually taste of the ingredients they contain."

How warm, hearty, and inviting do these flavors sound: Maine Lobster Bisque, Petite Marmite Soup, and Hunter's Soup? Later gourmet options included Corn Chowder, French Onion, and Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato soup (you'd have to provide your own bread and mayo). There was even a time when Pepperidge Farm had a mail order catalog, and 10 of their soups could be sent to a loved one for the fair price of $15.50. It's currently soup's off at the Farm, which is a shame considering they'd pair really well with Goldfish crackers floating in them.

The union intersection in a Venn diagram between the sets "Star Wars" and "cookies" equates to the no-brainer product of "Star Wars" Cookies. While "Star Wars" was a phenomenon in film, marketing, and tie-in products since its 1977 release, Pepperidge Farm wouldn't cash in on the craze until 1983's "Return of the Jedi."

Pepperidge Farm's Willard, Ohio plant was tasked with producing them before the film's release, and George Lucas not only oversaw the line to ensure their quality, but to prevent leaks of new characters like Jabba the Hutt, Admiral Ackbar, and Max Rebo from being revealed in advance (via News-Journal). The cookies came in three flavors, Rebel Alliance vanilla and peanut butter, and Imperial chocolate, and buying all three boxes qualified customers for a set of four drinking tumblers. While fanboys dream of tasting them again, Adam Richman actually got to do so for his show "Eating the 80s," which made quite a way for him to break his Yom Kippur fast (via The Sun).

Part of the charm and appeal of Pepperidge Farm cookies lies in their naming, with cities, regions, and countries lending theirs to create more than just a taste, but a transporting to a place. One of the more pleasurable trips taken in a white bag belonged to the Tahiti Coconut Cookies, which have been around since at least 1960 (but originally in a pink bag), and had its death confirmed via Twitter in 2022.

When Pepperidge Farm founder Margaret Rudkin whipped up the Tahiti, she wasn't interested, as she told the Meriden Journal, in putting out "just another coconut cookie" to market, and her own tropical and topical recipe proved to be such a success that it lasted six decades. So how did a product older than Goldfish completely crumble? The Geneva cookie is out of singular circulation, but at least lives on in Pepperidge Farm's Classic Collection favorite box. Doesn't the Tahiti deserve as much respect?